EOCAWKI: When All is Said and Pun...

In 1983 while working in the PR department at what was then Marine Midland Bank in New York, I decided to submit an entry to a relatively new writing competition established by San Jose State University. It was the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, essentially a bad writing competition named in honor of the author who wrote the novel that begins with the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night."  (No. It wasn't Snoopy.) The contest called for the opening line of a bad novel. My entry was: "Behar's swift feet carried him through the temple as his master, 'The American,' lay dying on a cot in the servant's hut." I entered just for fun and was quite surprised and delighted weeks later to receive a certificate of "Dishonorable Mention." By today's standards, my entry isn't great but I was really happy to get that Dishonorable Mention and I keep the certificate framed in my office to this day.  The contest has evolved over the years and the entries are often quite brilliant and extremely funny. (You can check out the latest at the contest web site, http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2015win.html)
     I also enjoyed those Washington Post competitions that had different criteria each week. For example, one called for removing a single letter from the name of a large company to create something else. So that produced things like "Itibank, for the small saver," and "General Ills, medicinal breakfast cereal."
  There are few things better than words, nicely arranged or altered to make people laugh. On the flip side, unintentionally misused words can feel like cold air hitting a chipped tooth. Someone once told me I was "in the wrong vernacular." He probably meant vocation. And someone once described to a friend how he had something "embezzled" on his belt buckle. Emblazoned, perhaps, or engraved? The comic Norm Crosby has been around forever and built his whole bit on such malapropisms. (More recently, when I heard "alternative facts," I wasn't sure whether to laugh out loud or howl in agony.)
    In any case, artfully misused words, words used in unexpected contexts, or puns can draw a laugh or a good-natured groan.
    Following are a few cringe-worthy examples to prime the pump. I'd love to see more. They don't have to be in any particular format. Anything that takes a word, well-known slogan or catch-phrase and uses or paraphrases it in a different way would be great.  If you have any to share please post them in a comment or send them my way. I think we can all use a chuckle these days, especially since the Cubs lost the World Series last year. Wait. Sorry. How did that alternative fact slip in there?

"He had worked his whole life for this. Now, America's Top Chef he could do what he needed to do -- rid the country of processed food, especially that silly canned cheese that so many people insisted on sprinkling on their pasta. He'd show them how much better it is to buy a fresh chunk and shred it yourself. Yes, he was ready... ready to make America grate again."

****

As a landscape designer, Jake sometimes didn't know who he was working for. This time, though, it was clear. He was sketching out the base paths for a  baseball field that would be part of a new housing subdivision and Dan Webber was well-known among real estate developers for his love of the national pastime. There could be no question about it. Diamonds are for Webber. 

****

"There she was, waiting, just like she said she would be. I drank in those liquid eyes and could almost taste those imploring lips, while her non-stop legs made a round trip to my heart starting from below my belt. She called me Little Caesar because she was hot and I was ready."